


all those sunken treasures

by starstrung



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 21:18:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9142702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstrung/pseuds/starstrung
Summary: They’re in Greece already, just finishing up on a lead that had seemed promising, but that had ended in low spirits, too many dots and not enough lines to draw between them. A dead ender.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Nate is 19-20 in this. Age differences are canon-compliant.

They’re in Greece already, just finishing up on a lead that had seemed promising, but that had ended in low spirits, too many dots and not enough lines to draw between them. A dead ender.

Some lost treasures never end up making their way through the veil of old history. It’s the nature of the game to only get a chance — a fool’s chance, if they’re lucky — to steal things that time didn’t get around to stealing first. And Sully’s been in the business long enough to know that time is the biggest thief out of all of them.

But he sees the unsolved puzzle still whipping around in that Nate Drake head. Nate’s never been able to let a lost trail go, isn’t good at trusting his intuition over stubborn pride. Yet. He’ll learn.

Sully buys them both drinks, the bar so full of people that conversations are running together and over each other and getting tangled up in knots in the meantime. Nate is uncharacteristically silent, sips his drink almost absentmindedly, and Sully half hopes some pretty face will catch his eye, just to draw him out.

He tries not to think about those nights Nate has stumbled back to his room, still drunk, still laughing, perfume and sex clinging to his skin, looking fucked-out and freshly fallen in love, but surprised when Sully guides him to bed and makes him drink a glass of water.

“You got a light?” he asks Nate, and Nate turns to look at him like he didn’t expect to find him there. He recovers quickly, fishing a lighter out of his back pocket and leaning over the bar to light the end of Sully’s cigar.

“You lose your lighter again?” Nate asks, not moving away, so that he can be heard over the din.

“Must have left it in the car,” Sully lies, and it’s worth it for the look of fond exasperation Nate gives him.

“What would you do without me?” Nate says, joking, but halfway through the sentence, Sully sees that familiar flash of uncertainty.

Old habits and years of charming his way into thieves’ dens and the confidences of dangerous people means that Sully keeps trying to crack why Nate still looks at him like that. Like he’s worried he’s going to leave him behind after this last adventure.

And it might just come down to Nate being right. Sully’s got a long line of broken bridges behind him, and the flightiness that comes from living out of a salvaged seaplane with not much in the way of legal permits. Nate’s stuck around near five years now, longer than he’s kept most friends, but Sully knows better than anyone to hope for turning new leaves.

He’s let the question hang unanswered for too long, and now Nate knows he’s seen that secret panic. Before he can pull away, Sully, puts an arm around his neck, like they’re conspirators, and feels Nate lean into it gratefully. “Honestly, kid, I’d probably go hungry or get stabbed by a woman in a flamenco dress, and there’s no way I’d have half as good a time before then without you stirring up trouble.”

Nate makes a face, like he’s not sure if Sully’s teasing him, but willing to believe him anyway. Melancholy has never suited him, even though Sully knows that he’s had more than enough of a life to merit it. “I don’t stir up trou—” Nate beings to protest, before a man bumps into him from behind as if to prove Sully’s point, spilling a little beer.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the man apologizes, steadying himself with a hand on Nate’s shoulder, clearly pretending to be more drunk than he is, and that’s all the notice Sully really needs to slip out of the conversation.

He joins a group of fishermen huddled under the bar’s flickering television and watches the football game, instead of watching the man take his place at the bar and begin to flirt with Nate. Nate responds to it like he responds to most flirting, like someone’s passed him through an electric current and suddenly he’s been magnetized.

In between cheering for the losing team, and getting into a friendly debate with the man on his right over international fishing laws, he still manages to notice exactly when the man puts his hand on Nate’s thigh.

When they both get up to leave, Nate’s eyes find his over the bar. He jerks his head to indicate that he’s leaving, the man’s hand curled comfortably around his waist, and Sully nods in response, raising his glass in encouragement.

There’s still a half moment before Nate turns away, though, like he’s still waiting for Sully to stop him. But it’s over soon enough that Sully can convince himself he imagined it.

Not long after that, Sully heads back to the hotel by himself, a little unsteady on his feet; maybe he had more to drink than he should have.

He gets dressed for sleep with heavy limbs, feeling old, feeling like he should have stayed longer in that bar, been the one to watch Nate go flushed and pleased with alcohol and attention.

Nate’s old enough that he’s going to be making his own way soon, whether or not Sully’s the one to push him away, and when he’s gone, Sully will still be here, a travelling thief in a dying age of travelling thieves. And maybe that’s what Nate needs. A push out of the nest, to be set on his course. The kid’s going to make a name for himself one day, Sully knows, and he’s never going to get there if Sully’s around to be possessive.

Because that’s what it is, Sully thinks, pushing the heel of his hand against his dick, imagining the man from the bar with the hand on Nate’s thigh, Nate gasping into that mouth, Nate laid across another man’s bed, calling out an unfamiliar name while he’s getting fucked into the—.

Sully can’t help but bite back a noise at that, more anger and disgust at himself than anything approaching arousal. He turns to his side, puts his hands underneath his pillow, and eventually falls asleep, thinking that tomorrow they can take it easy, and Sully can get his head straight.

-

Nate ends up waking Sully up with hot coffee, and a story about sunken ruins off the shore, and Sully’s only taken three sips before he knows he’s been hooked. Nate’s not much good at deception, but he sure as hell knows how to sell a venture when he puts his mind to it.

“I just wanna see it. Since we’re right here,” Nate says, and Sully wonders if the kid even slept at night, just stayed all night with the man from the bar and then, what, managed to hear about hidden treasures on the way back to the hotel? Even for Nate, that’s serendipitous.

“And you heard about this how?” Sully asks, not prepared for how Nate tenses.

“Met that guy at the bar, right?” Nate says.

Sully nods, takes a sip of his coffee, keeps his expression neutral. “Had a good time, then?”

Nate nods, an abortive, quick gesture. “He works for one of those scuba companies for tourists?" he says, and if the kid's aiming to sound casual, he's missing it by more than a mile.

"Anyway," Nate continues, "a group came back saying they’d found a sunken city nearby the caverns.”

“You didn’t go with him, then? He must have offered,” Sully says, and he’s worried that something in his voice gives him away, because Nate looks at him sharply.

“He did, but I said no,” Nate tells him, more than a little defensively. “I wanted to go with you.”

Sully doesn’t want to think about the warm feeling spreading through him, and decides to blame it on the coffee. “I guess I’ll go get us a boat, then,” he says, and Nate’s face opens into an easy grin.

-

It’s a beautiful sun-spilling day, and the surface of the ocean looks like stained glass, impossibly blue. Nate is in it like a fish, leaving his clothes in an untidy heap on the boat deck and slipping headfirst into the water with barely a splash.

He surfaces, glistening and pleased with himself, and Sully imagines the water must feel nice on a day like this. He can’t help being stunned by the effortless way Nate does the things he does, a good amount of gracefulness in the way he scales mountains and dives off rocks, but easy to miss by how it always seems he’s doing it all by accident.

Nate has never been much of a fair hand at deception, but he’s fooled more than a few with that raw gemstone talent, Sully thinks proudly.

“See anything?” Sully asks, leaning over the railing of the boat. The water looks impressively deep, deep enough for cities.

“There’s something here,” Nate says, treading water, enough wonder in his eyes to make Sully want to jump in with him, even though he’s lousy at diving, always seems to come up for air too quickly. “Old, really old. And some writing. It’s Greek, though. I’ll have to transcribe it and get it translated later.”

“Here, we can head back to town and get some scuba gear so you don’t have to keep making trips,” Sully offers.

But of course Nate shakes his head, sinking back into the water as soon as he’s caught his breath.

Sully sighs, and settles himself back to wait. The sun really is blinding, and he keeps to the shade with a book, a bottle of beer, and a cigar. Every few minutes, Nate will resurface, hoisting himself up onto the deck and writing out lines of Greek from memory, deftly drawing out impressions, and doing his best not to drip onto his journal. He even manages to find a statuette, worn nearly featureless from the water, but still with some recognizable details — a goddess, perhaps.

“If we get any money out of this, I’m buying you a nice underwater camera,” Sully grumbles, after the fourth or fifth trip, but Nate continues to look like he’s having the time of his life, even as the sun finishes its lazy climb in the sky.

Around noon, Nate takes a brief pause to sit cross-legged on the deck and swallow down half a cheese sandwich and a few slices of crisp apple that Sully cuts for him. He’s shivering slightly in the wind, freckles already blooming across his skin. Sully has to look away from all that sun-soaked skin, water making Nate’s swim shorts cling to his hips.

Nate tips his head back to gulp down some water, and if it were anyone but Nate, Sully would think he’s doing this on purpose, but of course Nate looks beautiful without having to put in effort, just like he does so many other things.

One time, Nate pulls himself out of the water, gasping a little in pain.

“What’s wrong?” Sully asks, looking up from his book.

Nate is bent over his foot, wet hair hanging over his face, wincing. “Bit of coral sliced my foot. Stings.”

Sully comes over to look. The cut, thankfully, is not too deep, although Sully is sure the saltwater isn’t making it pleasant.

“We can come back tomorrow if you want. Get that cleaned up.”

“No, I’m good,” Nate says stubbornly. “I just need one more trip.” He transcribes the last few lines of text into his journal and then dives back in.

This time, Nate stays longer under the water than usual, long enough that Sully starts to worry about him getting tangled in kelp under the water, wrestling an octopus in the depths, and he’s just considering diving in after him, when a shape jettisons out of the water and wraps legs and arms around him.

“Goddammit Nate,” Sully yells, stumbling under the impact as Nate, laughing, presses their foreheads together does his best to drip thoroughly onto Sully, stinking of salt. Sully gets his hand on Nate’s face and shoves. “Ugh.”

“You’re warm,” Nate says, letting himself be pushed away, shaking water out of his hair a little more enthusiastically than necessary.

“Yeah, I was sitting in the sun until some kid decided to bring half the Aegean Sea into the boat.” Sully’s shirt is already drying in the day’s heat, stiffening uncomfortably with a crust of salt. “Don’t make me throw that journal of yours into the water. Let some other fools find it two centuries later.”

“You wouldn’t,” Nate says, cheerfully, already writing down the last of the writing onto his journal. His foot still bleeds sluggishly.

Sully sighs. “Hold on, I’ve got a first-aid kit in here somewhere.” He looks through the tiny cabin and finds it in the metal cabinet.

Kneeling next to Nate as he writes, Sully washes away the salt with some bottled water and cleans the cut with alcohol wipes from the kit, wincing in sympathy when Nate hisses.

This is familiar — more familiar than it should be, if he’s being honest. Nate goes through first-aid kits with a speed that’s only become worse the older he’s gotten. There are days where Sully’s worried there’s nothing holding the kid together other than tape and painkillers.

He puts a bandage over the cut. “There,” Sully says, and looks up to find that Nate has finished writing and has been watching him. He turns away, putting everything back into the kit.

“You keep doing that, you know,” Nate says.

Sully swallows past a lump that’s formed in his throat. “Doing what?” he asks, sounding more unconcerned than he feels.

And then Nate moves so that he’s sitting square in Sully’s lap, hips settling against his own. The boat rocks gently beneath them, and — yeah, that’s definitely Nate’s dick pushing up against his swim shorts.

“Kid,” Sully says, trying to sound stern, but it’s more of a sigh than a warning, and anyhow, it’s not like he’s moved away, or pushed Nate off.

“You’ve been looking away each time. I want you to — to look at me,” Nate says, water dripping from his hair and down his neck, spinning sunlight on its way down, and before Sully can stop himself, he’s leaning forward to catch it with his mouth, licking at the salt like he’s been wanting to do all goddamn day.

Nate shivers in his arms, and that’s it, that’s undone it. Everything Sully’s told himself — that Nate should find someone younger, someone who isn’t as practiced a liar, who will teach Nate things other than how to fake a passport or shoot a gun — it all gets pushed to the side with the sounds Nate’s making into his ear, high and needy and pleading, Sully’s hand working him under his swim shorts, the other hand on Nate’s hip, keeping him in place.

Together, they end up peeling Nate out of the shorts entirely, and Sully wonders distantly about how they look right now on the open water, Nate now completely naked, Sully’s hand around his dick, sunlight turning the thin border of color around Nate’s blown-open pupils a silvery gray.

“Come on, kid, come on, I’ve got you,” Sully says, lets Nate clench his fists into the material of the back of Sully’s shirt.

“You look so goddamn pretty, did you know that? You—” and out of words, he seals his mouth over one of Nate’s pink, peaked nipples, and with that, Nate comes with a loud cry, spilling in Sully’s hand, and going boneless in Sully’s arms.

“Holy crap,” Nate says, panting into the collar of Sully’s shirt.

“Yeah,” Sully agrees. “Come on, kid, you’re not as light as you look.”

Nate shifts off of him, still gathering his breath, still just as distractingly naked, and Sully turns away to wash his hand out in the water.

There’s a weight at his back, then, as Nate presses up against him, mouthing into Sully’s neck. He reaches a hand around to cup at Sully’s crotch, and Sully groans.

“No, wait,” Sully says, before he can think of how it’ll sound. He feels Nate freeze, and draw away.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Sully tells him. “I don’t want to do this here, that’s all. I’m not as young as you, Nate.”

Nate brightens up at that. “You mean — are you going to —”.

Sully reaches out, takes Nate’s face in his hands. “Anything you want, kid. Anything you want.”


End file.
